Why your op-ed will never get published

TheNew York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and hundreds
of other publications reject thousands of op-eds each year. What is the
secret to successfully failing?

Get off to a good start by coming up with an anodyne headline before you
begin writing your boring commentary. Here’s one that should do the trick:
“How to Write an Op-Ed.” This is a winner because it’s unlikely to provoke
dissent, cause offense, spur curiosity or further discussion. The reader
will immediately skip to something—anything—more interesting.

Offer commentary on something that has already been covered in the op-ed
pages of whatever publication you are pitching. Even better, don’t read the
op-ed or news pages of your target publication for a week before you start
writing.

If you insist on commenting on something in the news over the last few
days, you can still turn off op-ed editors and readers alike by providing a
lengthy summary of that same news that they’ve already read instead of
giving the highlights in a sentence or two and getting to your point.

Lukewarm is the right temperature

Make sure to take a position no different from the consensus of most
leaders in your industry. In terms of temperature, think lukewarm: not hot
enough to burn anyone but warm enough to induce slumber.

If you’re going to take a contrary position anyway, a foolproof way to
guarantee your op-ed won’t run is to not address the likely rejoinders
others would offer in oppositions to your argument. Op-eds without
backbones get deleted.

Don’t forget that most readers are unlikely to read something just because
the writer is famous. Fortunately, like most op-ed writers, you’re probably
not famous, so most people, besides your mom, won’t care what you think.
The more you can insert yourself or, even better, your company into your
commentary in a self-promotional way, the more likely you will succeed in
sending your op-ed straight to the trash can.

If the publication in which you seek to publish your op-ed provides
guidelines for writing and submitting commentary, don’t read them. Or, even
better, read them and then convince yourself that you’re the exception to
guidance from TheWashington Post that stipulates pieces longer
than 750 words “are unlikely to be accepted.” Whatever you can say in 750
words, you can also say in 1,000 words.

Guidelines for a successful failure

As you write your commentary, keep these rules in mind if you want to
successfully fail:

Use the passive voice wherever possible because having something done
to you is way less interesting than doing it yourself.

Tell, don’t show. If you’re writing about why the number of men who
have died from lightning strikes in the U.S. over the last 10 years is
more than three times the number of women, make sure not to share the
details of a single incident or the name of a single victim.

Speaking of making assertions, a truly unprintable op-ed makes no
mention of
sources to back up each one.

Use as many adjectives and adverbs as possible and, if you really want
to bomb, toss in a cliché or two. The more time an editor must invest
in making your commentary concise enough to print, the less likely that
it’s going to be printed.

Don’t explain to readers why they should care about your opinion. If
you can’t avoid this, then put that explanation somewhere towards the
end of your piece. Journalists call this burying the lede. If you’ve
adhered to all of the other guidelines here, readers are unlikely to
make it that far anyway, assuming that editors haven’t already rejected
your piece.

The best writing is rewriting, which means that a truly awful op-ed
will tend to be a first or second draft with few edits or changes. The
more you rewrite, the better your piece will become. So, avoid
rewriting at all costs. If someone gives you guidance on how to improve
your commentary, ignore it.

Don’t read this

Finally, one of the best ways to not get your op-ed published is to not
read other op-eds published in the publication you’re targeting. Here’s a
great one from Bret Stephens of The New York Times. Don’t read it.

Tom Vogel is a Senior Vice President
at JConnelly, a communications and marketing agency based in New York.
A version of this article orginally appeared on the
JConnelly blog.